Whumptober 2019- Delirium
by Frankie McStein
Summary: Heavy duty drugs and mental trauma were a bad mix for Magnum.


All jokes aside, it was getting depressingly common for them to be spending time in hospital following Magnum getting himself injured somehow. Okay, it was usually just a patch up job, but still, it was very much the principal of the thing. He was a SEAL after all, those guys were meant to be tough. Sure, he had been up against four other guys and, really speaking, had actually done incredibly well to stay alive. But the point was that he shouldn't have been in the fight in the first place. At least, he shouldn't have been involved in it on his own. The whole thing where he leapt into the car while yelling "Meet me there!" looked very impressive, but it led to things like this happening.

Charging in without backup, without even knowing how far away backup might be, was another thing that Magnum was doing far too often. All right, the life of a pregnant woman had been on the line. Faced with similar circumstances, even someone without his training might well have jumped into the fray. But, with his training, Magnum should have…

Higgins sighed as her thoughts ran into a brick wall. Magnum couldn't have done anything differently, and she knew it. If she had been the one standing there, alone and unarmed, no ETA on backup, she would have made a move too. How aggravating. If she accepted that he'd had no idea he would actually need help when he went tearing off alone, and that he had done everything right when he had gotten to the club, then she didn't have anything to be angry with him about.

She was far more comfortable with anger than concern and would much rather go marching in to his room with righteous fury burning in her eyes than go creeping in with nothing but naked worry on her face. She was almost disappointed that the doctor came out before Rick or T.C. had arrived.

"He's very lucky." The doctor looked at his notes. "He's going to be very colorful for a while and in a fair bit of pain. There's a possibility of damage to his kidney, so we'll keep him in overnight to be safe. If there aren't any problems, we'll probably be sending him home tomorrow, as long as there'll be someone there to make sure he takes his meds and keep an eye on him."

"That won't be a problem, doctor, thank you." Higgins knew Rick and T.C. would be staying in the guest house for at least the first night or two. And she knew she would end up hanging around too. Between them, they would make sure Magnum abided by whatever orders he was given by the doctors before he got home.

"You can go on in if you'd like," the doctor was saying. "We gave him some rather strong painkillers to get him through the examination. His prescription will be for something weaker." He gave Higgins a brief smile as she nodded her understanding and then headed off to his next patient. She stood for a moment and looked down to the desk where she had spotted a familiar face. One hand lifted in a wave and, when she was sure T.C. had seen her, she pointed to the door, flashed up three fingers and then five, telling him Magnum was in room 35. T.C. gave her a thumbs up in acknowledgement then held up two fingers of his own before pointing to the main door to tell her he'd be there in two minutes, as soon as Rick arrived.

Higgins grinned and headed on into Magnum's room. If the painkillers he'd had were all that strong, then he'd been pretty out of it, and she could get the whole 'expressing her concern' bit out of the way without him noticing and before the other two joined her. Perfect. It really wouldn't do for these men to know just how much she worried about them when they were hurt or in trouble; she had a reputation to protect after all.

She stopped short in surprise as she walked through the door. She'd expected Magnum to be in bed, possibly even asleep. She hadn't even expected him to be sitting upright. She certainly hadn't expected him to be standing by the window.

"Magnum?" She kept her voice quiet, not wanting to startle him; there was every possibility he would fall over if he jumped, and she really didn't want to have to call the doctor back and explain how his patient had come to have more injuries. Magnum tipped his head, as if listening to her, but he didn't reply.

"What are you doing?" Higgins asked, keeping her voice soft and she walked slowly over to him. She knew from experience how hard it was to calm down after a life-or-death struggle, how jarring a loud noise could be to already stressed nerves. Magnum shifted slightly, turning toward her, and she smiled in relief; she'd been worried for a moment he would try to pretend he hadn't heard her, his drugged mind thinking it was funny.

"You really should be in bed, Magnum. Even you need to rest." As she reached out to rest her hand on his shoulder, she heard the door opening and half turned her head to talk to the two men she knew were walking in. That was the only reason the blow just knocked her over instead of breaking her nose.

There were confused noises spilling around her. Voices, she definitely heard voices. They weren't shouting; that was good. She wasn't feeling much pain; after the initial bloom of agony, an odd numbness had flowed over her skin, but she recognised the feeling as the precursor to a pain that was going to be a sod to overcome. Someone was moving over her, and she instinctively flinched away as the someone bent over her before she remembered where she was and who was with her.

"It's okay, Jules. You can stay there if you want." Rick sounded sincere, like he thought the offer was a good one, but it was really quite absurd. She was on the floor for goodness sake; why would she want to stay here? She tried to look up at him but moving turned out to be the thing that triggered the flare of pain, and she ended up dropping her throbbing head back to the floor.

"You're okay," came Rick's voice again, closer this time, like he was crouching next to her. "You're gonna be fine." Even with the pain making her ears ring and eyes water, she wasn't sure whom he was trying to convince: her or himself. She managed to tip her head to look at him and wasn't surprised to see him looking worried.

"Help me up, please," she managed, even though staying where she was for just a while longer really was quite tempting.

Rick slid one hand under her shoulder and offered her the other, helping her to sit up. She looked across the room to see T.C. pulling the blanket up over Magnum, whose eyes were closed. Rick followed her gaze.

"You know he would never hurt you on purpose, right?" He started to say something else, but Higgins stopped him with a scoff.

"Of course he wouldn't. This was my fault for walking up behind up a Navy SEAL who I knew had been heavily drugged." There was more to it than that, obviously. Magnum had responded to her voice so he had clearly known he wasn't alone in the room. But he obviously hadn't realised she was a friend. She had her suspicions about what he had thought when she had touched him, but they weren't important. What mattered now was Magnum and making sure he didn't suffer as a result of her foolishness.

"Was it the painkillers, do you think?" She looked at both Rick and T.C., confused by their expressions. "Is he likely to be aggressive toward the medical staff if you're both here?" She doubted he would be; T.C. seemed to have gotten him back into bed quickly and with no fuss at all. The look the two men exchanged told her she was right.

"So, one of you needs to go and tell someone that you're familiar with his medical history and the drugs they gave him are no good. Tell them you need to stay with him to keep him from hurting himself or someone else. They already know he was in the military so I doubt they'll try to argue."

"Umm… what about you Higgy? Don't you think we should tell them he hit you?" The question was tentative, like the answer was one he really didn't want to hear.

She wanted to offer Rick a smile, but she really was in too much pain to go stretching her mouth. "If we tell them what happened just now, they'll insist on restraining him. Waking up tied to the bed isn't going to help him is it?" She phrased it as a question, but she knew the answer.

"Higgy Baby, are you sure you're okay?"

She gave T.C. her very best 'you're being absurd' look. "I'm fine. I'm more worried about Magnum. He needs to rest so he can come home, not be subjected to padded cuffs and psychological poking and prodding to assess his aggression levels." She was familiar with the process, having accidentally broken the arm of an orderly a few years back after coming round from anesthesia to find him bending over her. The last thing she wanted was for one of her boys to have to go through that because of her, even if he was the most frustrating person she had ever met.

Rick and T.C. were having a full-blown conversation with their eyebrows, and she thought she could follow the gist of it; they were worried that she wasn't as fine as she seemed and that they were somehow letting her down by not making a fuss over what had happened. That simply wouldn't do. She didn't want them, or anyone else, making a fuss. She hadn't been there to protect Magnum while he had been getting his backside handed to him, but she could do something now.

"I'm going to head home before someone gets the bright idea of asking why I have a bruise on my cheek that wasn't there five minutes ago." She pulled herself to her feet and forced herself to ignore the way her swollen cheek was making her teeth hurt. "Take care of him," she said before she turned and walked out. She heard T.C. mutter something that sounded like "who's gonna take care of her though?" but she didn't turn around. Magnum needed them more than she did.

She managed to maintain her matter-of-fact attitude for the duration of the drive home and even thought she was ready to face Kumu. But, when Higgins walked into the study, she found the older woman was waiting for her with a sympathetic look and an ice pack, and Higgins felt her hands start to shake as her mind suddenly, violently, replayed what had happened. It told her in no uncertain terms that she could have been killed if Rick and T.C. hadn't walked in when they did, and she nearly fell into the chair that Kumu quickly pulled over to her.

"You poor thing." Kumu's voice was calm and quiet and just the balm Higgins' racing mind needed. She was fine, it was just an unfortunate accident, and Magnum would never forgive himself if he found out.

"I still don't get what happened to your face, Higgy." Magnum was trying to wheedle information out of her. "Why won't anyone tell me?"

"Because I threatened them all with defenestration if they ever share the story of how I got bested by a cupboard door." Higgins knew her voice was level and her delivery perfect, but Magnum was looking at her with narrowed eyes. She met his gaze calmly. After spending nearly an hour of the previous evening sitting in the study with Kumu holding her hands as they trembled in reaction, Higgins had slept like a baby, convinced she had done what was right.

She hadn't been able to protect Magnum from the arms dealers he had, through his typical luck, gotten spotted by. She hadn't even been able to protect him from himself when the painkillers had whisked him away from reality and sucked him into a delirium. But she could protect him from the knowledge that he had hurt her.

And she really had threatened the boys with a sudden fall from a big height if they ever let slip what had actually happened. Not Kumu though. Not even for her boys would Higgins dare risk threatening that woman.


End file.
